But, between ages 15 and 24, a great many people are at school or in training. The proportion of that population that is in school/university varies from country to country. In France it's fairly high. The pie-chart Jérôme provided above shows that (on the left) practically 60% (59.9% exactly) of age 15-24 French are in school. The active population (meaning those with a job or looking for a job) amounts to 26.7% with a job, 7.8% looking for one. Those 7.8% of the total age group amount to 22% of the active population of that age group.

So 22% is not a wrong figure, it's simply misleading in the context in which it's used by the media and the pundits. 7.8% of all young French between 15 and 24 are unemployed; the comparable statistic for the United Kingdom, for example, is 7.4%. Not much difference. Yet the journalists and commentators go on spouting the same stuff about youth unemployment in France.